Great Lives

Award-winning architect Sir David Chipperfield chooses the pioneer of modern architecture

Le Corbusier aimed to build a better world through radical buildings and the controversial reshaping of whole …

Matthew Parris is joined by Michael Horovitz who nominates fellow poet and founder of the 'Beat Generation', Allen Ginsberg, as his Great Life. Ginsberg's friend and biographer Barry Miles provides b…

The life of the 'Hillbilly Shakespeare' Hank Williams is the choice of Deacon Blue singer Ricky Ross.

Williams is regarded as being the prototype rock star and continues to be hugely influential on …

Grace Dent nominates Nancy Mitford for her wit, and for the way in which she showed women that it was possible to live your life fully and unconventionally.

Nancy Mitford's greatest success came with…

"In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable" – so said Winston Churchill on this week's Great Live, Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. Many would argue that he was Britain's greatest field comm…

Trade unionist Sir Brendan Barber nominates American author, John Steinbeck as his Great Life.

The author of The Grapes of Wrath aimed to fight the cause of the common man, was derided by the righ…

TV presenter Konnie Huq chooses the mathematician and daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace. With Matthew Parris.

From Banking, to air traffic control systems and to controlling the United States defe…

Matthew Parris is joined by actor Peter Bowles who nominates George Devine, groundbreaking artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre. Devine battled against the theatrical establishment, repressiv…

TV journalist and writer Paul Mason talks to Matthew Parris about the 19th Century French anarchist, Louise Michel, heroine of the Paris Commune. They're joined by historian Carolyn Eichner who says …

The writer Julie Burchill talks to Matthew Parris about the Hollywood star Ava Gardner. They're joined by Ava's biographer Lee Server.

Often described as ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’, Ava …

Playwright Tanika Gupta chooses as her Great Life, a man who is a hero to Bengali speakers across the World, Rabindranath Tagore.

Born in 1861, to a wealthy family in Calcutta, Tagore would be the fir…

Poet, playwright, and critic Gabriel Gbadamosi chooses as his Great Life the political maverick and inventor of Afrobeat, musician Fela Kuti, and tells Matthew Parris why his work deserves to be bett…

Astrologer and performer Russell Grant chooses one of the greatest screen legends of cinema's early years – Ivor Novello.

Born in 1893 in Cardiff, Novello was also a talented writer and composer and …

Dr Lucy Worsley chooses a figure as familiar as she is unknown, the great champion of Victorian nursing, Florence Nightingale. Known as 'the Lady with the Lamp' for her work in the Crimea.

Born in 182…

Edmund de Waal chooses a writer he believes is one of the greatest of the modern age - Primo Levi, author of the Periodic Table. Born in 1919 in Turin, Levi was an Italian Jew, one of the few deporte…

John Cooper Clarke, poetry's Punk Laureate, nominates Salvador Dali, the surrealist behind melting clocks, lobster telephones, and that trademark moustache.

Matthew Paris asks whether Dali was a geniu…

Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts champions the life of Liverpool’s football manager Bill Shankly.

In the 1960s, Bill Shankley took his team from division two to become one of the world's greatest sides…

Broadcaster and writer Gyles Brandreth nominates Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as his "Great Life".

Matthew Parris chairs, assisted by biographer Andrew Lycett.

Conan Doyle is best known as the creator of th…

Dr David Livingstone was the Victorian equivalent of an astronaut - a man who ventured into the  interior of Africa to report on territory that was wholly unknown to Europeans. In this programme, the…